BY NEVILLE DE SILVA

Most of us have heard of that English idiom “snake in the grass”. You don’t have to go back to 37 BC and be a reader of the Roman poet Virgil to be acquainted with this metaphor.

Surely there are more snakes in the grass today than Virgil could have imagined. It is not because there is more grass or more people. It is simply that treachery is more widely practised today than in the days when Julius Caesar’s friends turned round on him one fine afternoon and stabbed Caesar in the back right there on the senate floor. Still he had enough time to say “Et tu Brute” which subsequently appeared in collections of famous last words.

It seems even the senate where laws were made in the old days in Rome was not sacrosanct. Much like our own law-making institution called parliament where the sovereignty of the people reside, or so experts in constitution making and breaking tell us.

Thankfully nobody in our august assembly (okay, okay let it go) has been stabbed in the back -literally I mean - thought several pugilistically- inclined have displaced their prowess now and then inside the chamber and occasionally deposited one or two of their fellow representatives in hospital or seeking some medical treatment.

How quickly they get medical attention would depend on whether paediatric Padeniya and his compadres are working and the big chief is not out there in the streets rallying his ‘ harm’ troopers as Hitler did with his storm troopers, declaring no medicine today for the suffering people.

Why, our great assembly has even seen law makers, law breakers and other assorted types turn the chamber floor into an instant dining area where they have feasted on fried rice and curried chicken and other culinary